So much hoola-hoop about backlinks! Most SEO companies have ‘link-building’ as their primary deliverable in their service agreement.That suggests that a lot of SEO people consider backlinking as the chunk of their service activity. Is it as easy as that- just link to as many sites you can and over a period of time you rise up the rankings? I am sure we all know the answer to that. Its a resounding NO!We have a mature enough audience here so I need not get into the ‘backlinking’ 101 here. Still, a reference point can be accessed. Lets see what the Wikipedia says:-

“Backlinks (or back-links [UK]) are incoming links to a website or web page. Inbound links were originally important (prior to the emergence of search engines) as a primary means of web navigation; today their significance lies in search engine optimization (SEO). The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as PageRank, are likely to be more important). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal, cultural or semantic interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.”

For me as a marketer, backlinks are a way of ascertaining the authority of a site and in effect your business within your niche/industry. As it says above, ‘ who is paying attention to that page’ is a great indicator of how to define a backlink strategy. ‘Who’ is important. Defining ‘target audience’ is important.  So ideally where would you go looking for backlinks-

• Sites where your target audience can be found.
• Non-competing industry sites that respect your authority.

From marketing standpoint a well-defined backlinks strategy must incorporate the following thoughts-

• Define and locate target audience online.
• Find ways of reaching the target audience.
• Once you meet your target audience mid-way you bring them to your site( by backlinking)

I have had really hard time finding a ‘why’ report on Nexus One. Granted that the information available is a bit on the lower side to form any hypothesis about why Google ventured into mobile industry. Still people managed to gather bits about the processor (Snapdragon), platform (Android 2.1) and even the touch screen features of Nexus One without an official release out. So why not let me analyze why Google needed a smartphone at this point of time. The world is moving from computer-based online surfing to handheld devices. This is going to be the trend and innovations thought around this will rule the future. Google has the largest target audience to command.

1. Google Has Already Proved Android As The Windows Mobile Killer- With some of the best phones of 2009 (HTC, Samsung, Verizon Droid etc.) already successfully using Android, Google has killed two birds with a shot- They have a proven platform for their own smartphone, and, they have already proved that Wi Mo is not infact a good choice for next generation mobile devices. This is yet another masterstroke in Google Vs  Microsoft battle, where a successful Nexus One will eventually push Win Mo phones further down the list behind the likes of Nexus One, HTC, and Apple 3GS.
2. Google Wants Chrome To Be The Browser Of Choice- for both computer and mobile based- Are we surprised? Just a few days ago Google started displaying Chrome ads on Google search pages all over the word. Is this a co-incidence that their very first mobile device is coming out while they are putting Chrome in front of millions of their users. I am not sure yet, but Nexus One will be using some kind of Chrome mobile browser, either right away, or in future. Tell me about IE Vs Chrome battle here.
3. Want To Warm The Market For Chrome OS- Well, well, Google’s own OS is going to be out soon. Experts believe that’s the reason why big G has started the Chrome promotion campaigns- to make ‘Chrome’ a household name by the time OS comes out. And if Nexus One has some variant of Chrome, that’ll be the icing on the cake- both the computer-based and mobile-based audiences captured. Should the Windows guys start to worry about this already? I bet they are already on Mars to find a solution to counter this!
4. Next-Gen Technology In Snapdragon+Android- Google seem to be coming out to ruffle the feathers of all the big brands. The Snapdragon association will sure make Intel and Nvidia a bit uneasy. Intel’s Atom and Nividia has been proclaiming that their processor is the thing of future. They have some neat little ‘netbooks’ to point to. But guys, Snapdragon+ Android has already been tipped as the future of next-generation mobile technology.
5. Mobile Application Market- 2009 has been the year of touch screen smartpones and mobile apps. Apple has its own apps store already sold a gazillion apps to Apple users worldwide. This would surely worry me if I have the majority of online users at my command and  I am letting Apple and others leverage all that benefit. Google has built the empire around some fantastic free softwares ( Gmail, Docs, Waves to name a few). Every bit of code that’s used by users lets Google into the lives and psyche of internet population. Makes them so much nearer to Google and addictive to G services. Mobile Apps is a great new opportunity towards that age-old Google expansion strategy. I bet Nexus One will have a hoard of free classy apps to start with.
6. Extended Mobile-Search Market- I know I said five reasons, but in the excitement I can’t stop churning. So here’s the bonus tip why Nexus One is so much more than a phone to Google. With Google’s own platform (Android), own browser, and own apps, wouldn’t it be far easier to manage and organize their search market in the mobile internet user niche. That’s their core business after all and any new product supplementing the core model is a stroke of genius.

Nexus One is a multifaceted personification of Google’s long-term strategy that’s not only going to pave the way for future but also leverage on Google’s astounding brand name to kill competition and surge ever ahead.

• Find out how much duplicate content are you using within your site.
• If you find multiple URL’s within your sitemap with similar content, volunteer and be willing to choose one over another. Smart huh, Google! But wait…
• Use rel=canonical tag to tell Google which URL you’d prefer them to crawl, index and rank.

Rest of the post is about using 301 redirects and using Webmaster Tools URL parameter handling tool.

Now, this week Google came out to address the heart of the duplicate content issue- duplication across multiple domains. This is something most article marketers and grey-hatters are worried about. You can check the duplicate content cross-domain issue post yourself.

Reading and making sense of the whole thing, I reckon this will be helpful to both Google and genuine webmasters being penalized for dupe content unknowingly.

While this will help a lot of people, the canonical tag will mostly be debated by content marketers. Can Google convince article marketers to tag one source over the other?Well, this will surely make G’s task easy but what’s the advantage to those who distribute their articles to hundreds of directories? The non-tagged URL’s will not make it to SERP’s but will they pass on link juice? Will they themselves have ANY value at all?

This is one of the FAQ regarding this topic which Google played rather diplomatically-

“Q: I’m offering my content / product descriptions for syndication. Do my publishers need to use rel=”canonical”?
A: We leave this up to you and your publishers. If the content is similar enough, it might make sense to use rel=”canonical”, if both parties agree”

If you have a blog/site and ever done some article marketing you must have come across the ‘duplicate content’ debate. Article marketing relies upon submitting to multiple, often, hundreds of directories at the same time. If you were to submit to even 50 directories you’d be really worried about writing all those articles. Most people blast the same stuff to all the directories. And then the debate arises.

If you’re giving away same stuff, are you not creating spam?

What’s the point of duplicate article syndication, when in the first place article directories are supposed to be information powerhouses?

Will your be banned by Google?

What’s the best way forward, where you don;t have to write an original article for each directory and still you escape the ‘ban’?

Find out all the duplicate content issue debate here in my very first podcast.


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I received a mail from one of my forum mates the other day. We had a lot of discussion about internet marketing in general. Here is a little excerpt from our conversation. I thought it’ll help a lot of people.

Q-How do I pick a good niche to promote? (In this very thread, Robert said about one of the niches: “that niche is almost dead now”. How do I avoid picking a niche that’s dead and choose one that is popular?)
Me: A niche is not a fashion trend that’ll come and go. In internet marketing and especially within affiliate marketing, a niche is simply a very specific area of interest that will be profitable. So, two things- ’specific area of interest’ for consumers, and it should be ‘profitable’ to you as a product seller/promoter. Affiliates talk about some niches to be ‘dead’ meaning they are saturated with far too many products and affiliates promoting them. Any product getting too much attention looses it sheen over time, as every tom, dick and harry is out there with a one-page sales site to promote it. A niche is magical when there is a specific interest in it but few providers. For example, ‘career and employment prospects for ex-cons’.

Q-How do I pick the “long tail keywords” around which to write the articles? Some e-books suggest picking keywords with over 5000 search results in Google but not too much competition. Still have no idea how to tell if a keyword has too much competition
Me- You have to rely upon a good keyword research tool for this. Wordtracker is pretty good. There is no one tool that gives exact data on search engine numbers but Wordtracker gives a decent estimate. Now, to evaluate profitability of any keyword a term is used- Keyword Effectiveness Index. Higher the KEI, better the keyword, they say.

Q-If you take the total dollar amount you’ve made writing articles and divide it by the actual number of articles you’ve written, how much do you get?
Me-It’s pretty hard to work out the ROI for article marketing. It’s only possible if you ONLY employ article marketing in generating sales/traffic.Still, you’d have to take into account web-site maintainance and basic SEO-hours-spent costs.If you can somehow track every article you wrote and published. If you could follow and track that article wherever it’s published further and work out how much it made for you, same tracking can be done with all the articles and you’ll have a ROI. It can be done with Analytics, just never felt the need to do it myself yet.

Q-Top Internet Marketing expert suggests submitting articles to EZA and bookmarking them for long-term traffic. What specific actions do I take to “bookmark them for long-term traffic”? Is this process really necessary? (doubt raised – see next question)
Me- This is not an unusual approach. Article marketing is not just about writing and publishing articles, but is also about creating multiple entry points to your site via all those places where the article gets.Now, the onus is upon you to give legs to those articles. Whether you publish them on EZA or Goarticles, smart marketers never rely simply on the traffic generation methods of article directories. You have to do your bit and promote your article. Simple bookmarking can include- Stumble Upon, Digg, Reddit, Propeller, posting on your Facebook and Twitter accounts. The point is to spread the word from your end.

Q- A seasoned Internet Marketer disagrees with the previous statement: “When you build those backlinks all you’re doing is generating a lot of adsense revenue for EzineArticles or GoArticles. Your time is better spent elsewhere”. Who is right? I need to have a system in place before I start.

Me-True, but then what.Think about this- if you generate enough traffic that increases Adsense revenue from the content of your article what does that mean? All those coming to that page are coming via your ‘bookmarking’ after having heard about your article, wouldn’t they read and pay attention to the article first. Or, they’ll simply click on Adsense ads as if they are paid to do that.

Q- Top Internet Marketing expert says: “Do solid keyword research, find 10 high traffic and low competition keywords”.
What is the criteria that defines a “high traffic but low competition keyword”??? I need to define this, otherwise I could waste a lot of time.
Me-Nobody will give a figure for that..The term ‘credit card’ has close to 95 million web results in Google search. Still most affiliates have at least one credit-card program in their portfolio.KEI is the best bet to find out. Generally, a keyword with KEI above 100 is okay to work with.Again, you have to treat each case separately.See KEI is only a ratio between ‘keyword searches’ and ‘available web-resources’, so you can  have different keywords with same KEI but different potential.

Q-Top Internet Marketing expert says: <<Write 10 SEOed keyword specific articles around 400-450 words each.>>
Before I start writing, what is the definion of a Search Engine Optimized article?

Me-Keywords in hand. Sprinkle them in title, heading and body of the article. Keep it within 2% density. Write a killer title and include keywords. Resource-box/author-bio is your elevator-pitch. All the links in the bio should have your keywords as the anchor text.

Q-HOW DO I PICK THE “LONG-TAIL KEYWORDS” to write about and how many keywords should be targeted in a typical article?
Refer to the Wordtracker question above. You can target between 1-3 keywords per article. Normally, I use one main and two long-tail derived from the main.For example, ‘credit card’, “interest free credit card”, “no fee credit card”.

Q-HOW DOES A TYPICAL PROFESSIONAL ARTICLE WRITER actually come up with the content? Is it mainly reading other articles and wikipedia(if available) and completely rephrasing the information? This question assumes the writer has no knowledge of the niche in question.
Me- Internet research is paramount. Making yourself familiar with the content is the first step. Being a pro writer, you’d know how to structure any writing quickly. For example, I work with a summary, an intro paragraph, 5-8 bullet points and a conclusion. Any structuring that you use can be employed to format the info that you have gathered via research.

Not only do they have a huge collection of costumes ( I know I am starting to sound like their sales rep, apologies), but they have a funny/sexy video with each costume. So you can actually see the costume in action. This is smart marketing to say the least. I can’t think of anyone not buying this Playboy costume after watching the above video.

• 1. Scalability- This depends hugely on the tasks mentioned in the first and the fifth point in the list, i.e. finding the demand and researching article directories. Scalability is a lot about long-term need of the niche. Its also about whether there is a possibility to expand in that niche.  This is a key criterion I persist with. Although it’s not really simple to anticipate scalability of any new niche, finding such a niche can be a difference between huge profits or mediocre results.

• Digital Product- We are living in an age of information. Increasing number of online entrepreneurs are engaged in selling/promoting digital goods. It always pays to investigate whether your chosen niche has a potential to sell digital products. Internet is information-based medium. Most people flock it to access information. So, its really hard to find a niche with no scope for digital selling. Still some are better placed than others. That’s what you have to find out. Check places like, Clickbank and E-junkie for existing digital goods.

• Existing Affiliate Products- Unless you are looking for strictly an advertisement-based business model, you will need affiliate product to sell. Following up from the previous point, you will need products/services to sell. They could be yours, or, someone else. Researching in advance about existing affiliate products is a good indication of niche popularity. If there are a lot of products, you can presume that there is a vibrant existing market. Lack of existing options to sell/promote in a particular niche combined with a low demand normally means you got to ignore it.

• Authority Sites: If you can find a niche, which has huge demand, low competition, which is not too complicated to create content, with good scalability and a thriving affiliate scene than you have hit the jackpot. Only thing remains to be asked from the Genii is a lack of a clear authority site/blog in that niche. Because if you have identified an ideal niche with no clear winner, you have an unparallel opportunity to rule that niche for years.

• Adsense Income- With all things being equal, I will pick a niche with higher paying Adsense keywords. How do you find that? There is no exact way, because Google/Yahoo can never disclose that. A fair indication is again given by Google’s Adwords Keyword tool. Try to find a keyword’s CPC ( cost per click) as if you are an advertiser. Keywords with higher CPC generally earn higher Adsense click commission. There are a thousand metrics involved in assessing a content-click cost to be paid to the publisher, but this CPC formula gives a fairly good idea.

I hope this comprehensive list will give you enough ideas to arrive at that perfect niche. I am always talking to affilate marketers about ways they spot a winner. Trust me, these ten steps form the bulk of research strategy of those who are churning the best moolah.

How To Find a Profitable Niche

If you know how to leverage the power of the internet to generate revenue by selling stuff, you probably already have a site or a group of sites. Whether you are an Ebay seller with your own site, or, a reseller makes no difference at all. If you are in profit, you must have found the formula to do business successfully online. Now the next stage is replicating this success by selling even more stuff. Building your second site. Starting your next ecommerce store.

The big question is what to sell next? You already know the technical side of an ecommerce business. You understand the traffic generation and conversion stuff. To move on to another product you need to make sure there is a market for it. You must take stock of the competition. How is the profit margin? Whether to source it from a manufacturer, if it’s a physical product, or, do affiliate selling? Can you rely completely on a non-selling model and earn from advertising alone ( Adsense etc.) ? Is there a scope for a digital/multimedia product (software, ebook, report, video/audio training) in that niche?

To answer these questions I have developed a process of 10 steps. I use this exact list to determine a niche I am going to dive-in. This is by far the most comprehensive list you could find online to dig a really profitable niche.

1. Demand- This is obvious, without a demand for your product it’s silly to try and sell it. We need to know exactly how many people online are searching for the stuff we can offer. Simplest and best tool to find out search demands online is Google Adwords Tool . The tool will also show you variations of key phrases you type. So you’ll a bigger picture and a lot of ideas. For more keen users Wordtracker is one of the best keyword-research tool out there. This exercise should give you factual number of searched being done for your niche. Write it down.
2. Competition- Demand/Supply rule works for online businesses as well. Now we understand what’s the demand for your niche, lets gauge the existing supply/competition. Search engines are again the best to find this out. I try to use Bing and Google both. Type in the most generic phrase describing your niche. Suppose it’s , ‘ tennis elbow’. In Google, the top right-hand corner shows the number of results returned. This is the amount of competition. Remember this is for the general phrase, ‘tennis elbow’. If you type in ‘tennis elbow treatment’, the number will go down. More specific you get, lesser the competition. These longer and more specific niche phrases are called long-tail keywords. So, choose your keyphrase describing your niche best and note the competition figure.
3. Your Interest- Without your inherent interest in the topic of your next blog/site, it’ll be really cumbersome. We are not looking for a hobby site, of course it’s a business but without some sort of knowledge and interest you won’t be abl eto pull it off. Try building an art history/criticism blog when the only time in your life you heard about The Last Supper was in a tom Hanks film. Point is that you do need some basic knowledge and interest in the niche.
4. Content Generation- Niche sites are built upon the premises of consistent content funnelling. Big question to ask when you are deciding upon the niche is- Can I gather enough content over a period of time? Can I write it myself? Can I arrange it from ghost writers/freelancers? Is it a really complex topic and only people who can write content for me are NASA scientists? You get the point. Clear the content strategy right here at this stage.
5. Popularity on Content Sites- Anik Singhal knows a thing or two about niche-marketing. His report on article-marketing talks at length about using Ezinearticles to research the popularity of that niche. This is important because niche sites are content driven. There can be no better place than article-directories to find out what content is popular. Anik has given an advance system to gauge the long-term and short-term potential of that niche. You can get the report for $5 if you want. Otherwise, doing a basic research on Ezinearticles/Go Articles can teach you a lot about your intended niche. ( For the records I don’t get any credit for praising Anik’s report or his system.)

The rest of the list continues in next post. Please write back what system do you guys use to find a profitable market to enter. I know there isn’t a definite system. This one nearly covers most ground. What say?

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning and the first thing that I knew,
There was milk and toast and honey, and a bowl of oranges, too.
The sun poured in like butterscotch, and stuck to all my senses,
Won’t you stay, we’ll put on the day, and talk in present tenses?

Above lines from Joni Mitchell’s Chelsea Morning highlight the significance of ‘now’- the ‘present tense’. Steve Yastrow wrote a full post talking about Joni’s song. Of course Steve is a customer-relationships expert and he found and understood the wisdom from Joni’s song thus:-

“One of the key components of a relationship-building encounter is that you and your customer need to both be fully present, engaged in the present moment. As I wrote in this recent post on tompeters.com, one of the easiest ways to kill a sales conversation is to be focused on the next step in the sales process, ignoring the opportunity to create an encounter RIGHT NOW, in the present moment.”

This post has been my favorite for its modest simplicity and acuteness of message. It hits home the point. So does Joni’s song.

What’s the ultimate purpose of any business transaction? To provide a best suited solution to your customer’s problem. A transaction is deemed complete when both parties are satisfied. In the present tense. Do you make a lasting relationship in that moment of encounter? That’s what counts. Does every moment of interaction a relationship-builder? That can only happen when you don’t jump the bogey. Trying to get their email even before they have explored your site well. Trying to sell that extra year’s hosting while they are still comparing prices. Pushing your newsletter even before they know who you are. These are some examples of  jumping-the-bogey in online business world .

When you visit your doctor the first thing that needs doing is your doc putting the stethoscope on your chest and asking you to take a deep breath. The first question will never be about where you buy your medicines from, or, would you buy a health policy from a friend of his. Let him make you feel a little better first. That’s the whole point. Isn’t it.

This ‘making you feel better’ idea always brings me to Sheryl Crow’s eternal song.

Jump in, let’s go
Lay back, enjoy the show
Everybody gets high, everybody gets low
These are the days when anything goes

Everyday is a winding road
I get a little bit closer
Everyday is a faded sign
I get a little bit closer to feeling fine

• Over prepare, then go with the flow

When there is a really nervous event coming ahead and you can do nothing except to sweat and spend sleepless nights. There is one thing you can do- prepare, prepare and over prepare. That’s the only confidence booster in hard times. The Law of Karma/Actions says that we can’t influence results by merely worrying about them. Only way to ascertain a favorable outcome is by making sure the ‘action’ is performed right. Wouldn’t you do your homework well and prepare? Regina says, Over prepare and go with the flow.

• If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back

This is an old one. Humans have a tendency to magnify their own problems and other people’s happiness. Should be the other way round for a happy life, shouldn’t it. We tend to think my probs are the biggest and most complicate. While my friends always seem to do great.  In business situations this hurts even more. This commandment has a lot in common with a previous one- ‘Don’t compare your life with others’. The simple fact is that we just CANNOT know what’s the deal with others, what’s their life like from inside? Using the theory of relativity we can always find someone with more problems than us. Then why we tend to look at those with lesser issues than us. Its de-motivating and induces negativity. I bet you will never trade your business problems with mine. At least you know your problems better.

• No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up

The show must go on. Woody Allen has a great quote about,’ half the success is about showing up’. This also applies to having off-days or bad- days that an entrepreneur can have. Don’t let your feelings and mood dictate your business. The show must go on at all cost.

• Yield

Yield is a beautiful word. It can mean ‘to be productive’ and it can also mean ‘to give way’ or ‘to surrender’. The biggest mantra anyone can give to an entrepreneur is to be productive. To yield is to produce what it is that you are here to create. Is it money and fame for yourself, go do it. Is it a solution of an intricate problem of your clients, go provide it. The ROI of your efforts and must be produced.

The other meaning is also great. It teaches politeness and patience. The age-old dictum of let-go. Its not the rudest trees that withstand the vagaries of nature and hails, but the most polite and flexible. Conceding a small battle can often win you a major war.

• The Best is Yet To Come

Yes, the time can only improve. The ever-growing ever-improving life is the only life worth living. Every morning wake up with hope and ambitions for your business. Each day a bigger ambition and even better plans. Because, the best is yet to come. So prepare to embrace it.